


Rabid Beasts and Storms Behind My Eyelids

by thereweregiants



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Breathplay, Forced Orgasm, M/M, Spoilers to the End of Season 3, Woundplay, healthy and unhealthy relationships, mild body horror, minor recreational drug use, the consequences of worms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:55:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27071611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thereweregiants/pseuds/thereweregiants
Summary: An exploration of Timothy Stoker's relationships with various colleagues at the Magnus Institute.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard/Tim Stoker, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist/Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood/Tim Stoker
Comments: 6
Kudos: 59





	Rabid Beasts and Storms Behind My Eyelids

**Author's Note:**

> I blame lee, sci, and the end of season three, after which I immediately opened a document to word vomit my feelings into  
> there's like four fic deadlines hanging over my head right now okay, but nooo just had to get this damn thing out. bah.
> 
> title from Lady Lamb's [Little Brother](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvsL3Y_DJ-o)

It was so easy, at first. 

The Institute was...weird, to be sure, but not really any weirder than the publishing house in the end. He was researching mysterious bin bags that might eat people instead of copyright-free photos that could be used for book covers, but it used the same mental muscles, really.

(every book and every statement and every witness he came in contact with he strained for any small bit of Danny that he might find, but after a few months he realized it would be a long slog and it settled down to a constant low level ache instead of piercing pain edged with hope at every new tape every new statement every new chance)

He likes his coworkers well enough, he supposes. Some more than others, but it’s like that at every job. Tim has never had problems sleeping with colleagues, he thinks it’s because he’s always polite, treats them kindly even after it ends. In reality it’s because it’s always surface level - it’s hard to feel hurt by someone who you know isn’t looking past a few orgasms with you. One looks at Tim, and it’s as if he wears a shirt labelling him as a ‘good time, not a long time’.

(anything approaching a deep emotion with Tim is locked up somewhere in a box with  _ Danny _ clawed into the fragile wooden surface)

Martin is different.

Martin doesn’t seem to get that Tim is flirting with him, whether he’s being subtle or obvious. He brushes Tim’s best advances off with a distracted smile and asks if Tim wants a cup of tea. And not as a date - he asks the janitors the same thing in the same tone of voice. Tim honestly can’t tell if he’s being snubbed or if Martin just doesn’t get that he’s being flirted with. He does know, Tim thinks to himself as he tilts his head to watch Martin bend over and get a box of files, that Martin isn’t aware of when he’s being attractive.

It starts to become a distraction borne of deprivation - the more Tim doesn’t have Martin, the more he’s intrigued by him. He wonders if the tousled curls are really as soft as they look, wonders if his eyes are as big and blue without the glasses. The man wears cardigans with braces underneath, for god’s sake, but all Tim wants to know is what the red marks would taste like if he pulled the straps away and let them snap against Martin’s chest.

(the box cracks open, and a thread of something like curiosity wends its way along Tim’s nerves, along his tendons and joints and keeps making him reach out with aborted movements over and over like he’s reaching for something inside of Martin, or perhaps deeper, farther, somewhere in his past)

He finally gets so annoyed he sets it up - grabs a statement on crumbling paper and asks for Martin’s help in the Archives. They end up so deep in the stacks that the silence almost presses in on their ears, the dust motes that float down to settle on their shoulders so large they can nearly be felt. Martin babbles to fill the heavy silence, something predictable in the gloom. 

Also predictable is when Tim presses Martin back against the shelves, only to jerk him to the side as a Leitner topples down, no doubt hoping to be opened by one of them accidentally. Martin’s eyes are so very wide and so very guileless as he stares up the few inches at Tim, mouth hanging open but snapping shut as Tim traces the vermillion border of his lips with a fingertip.

Martin doesn’t move as Tim cradles his jaw with one hand, doesn’t move as Tim’s other arm slides forward to wrap around his waist. It’s only when Tim’s leaned forward and they’re breathing the same air that he says - Not here, not here.

Tim is about to wonder if he’s been brushed off for good, when they’re distracted by the Leitner jumping up and snapping at their ankles. It catches a good hold of Tim’s pant leg, and the next five minutes are spent fashioning gloves out of Martin’s cardigan and attempting to pry the book off without touching it or letting it get at Tim. 

They trudge upstairs together, sweaty and scratched up and covered in thick layers of dust. There are emergency showers that they use in turn - called ‘emergency’ as if they’re not used daily to wash off the dust and blood and various fluids that are part and parcel of the Institute - and they end up clad in their backup clothes. A jumper advertising some bookshop in Devon for Martin, an old rock-climbing club shirt for Tim.

(it used to be Danny’s of course, Tim doesn’t know how he got it in with his spare clothes, he doesn’t wear anything of Danny’s because then the smell would be gone - not in a weird way, but he can’t remember what it smelled like when he hugged him and would bury his nose in Danny’s hair and that’s one more little death that the Circus and the Institute have ripped away from him, one more on their nonexistent conscience)

A few hours of work that Tim isn’t sure he does anything with go by, and then the Institute releases them for the evening like a predator lazily opening its jaws in a yawn. Tim stumbles out, tugging his too-short shirt down to meet his trousers, barely realizing Martin is beside him. He goes to turn, make his way to his usual station - and is stopped by a hand on his arm.

Martin looks - tired, a bit sallow in the ugly red-orange of his jumper, but when he raises his eyebrows in question something uncurls inside of Tim. He follows the other man wordlessly - the opposite direction of where Tim normally goes, somewhere over in Stockwell.

Martin’s flat is small, cozy even. Decorated with items that seem mostly inherited, the kind of thing you end up with rather than choose. Fewer books than expected, more electronics. Tim only gets a quick look around as he follows Martin, ending up rather quicker than expected in the bedroom.

Tim had expected Martin to be more - reticent. To be shy, to have to be seduced or coached into things. A stereotype, and perhaps an unkind one, looking at the man’s soft curves under his jumper and thick glasses above.

Instead Martin strips down easily in the dying light of day, bars of warm light through the blinds wrapping around a chest dusted with hair and with a few well-placed scars, a stray sunbeam highlighting the dark thatch of curls between his thighs and what isn’t there.

If it’s a problem - he says.

Tim shakes his head, already struggling out of his shirt that wraps around him and doesn’t seem to want to let him go. No, no, he says, and soon enough he’s setting Martin’s glasses aside and tasting his mouth with a soft sigh.

They  _ fit _ together, far better than Tim expected. Sliding into Martin is like - oh, there’s a thousand cliches, but something in the back of his mind keeps going back to this sweater Tim had stolen from a first boyfriend and how it just felt  _ right _ wrapped around him, even when the boyfriend was a long distant memory. 

Martin had shaken his head at the condom Tim pulled out, and Tim was surprised enough at this recklessness that he didn’t question it. He’s certainly not complaining, the wetslickplush heat of Martin hits so much harder, makes him reluctant to even pull back just to thrust in again.

He’s as vocal as Tim had hoped for, all small breathy moans that get louder as Tim figures out how to move his fingers just right. He comes with a cry against Tim’s neck, murmurs for Tim to keep going even as he twitches from oversensitivity. It doesn’t take much for Tim to follow, not with Martin’s soft voice reciting broken sentences of filth at how Tim feels into his ear. 

They lay locked together catching their breath, until Martin does another one of those unexpected and arousing things and pushes on Tim’s shoulder. Looks at him with lazy blue eyes and tells him to clean up his mess, in the same tone he would if Tim had spilled milk on the counter by the kettle. 

Tim goes, more out of surprise than anything else. Wriggles his way down, licks himself out of Martin until the bitterness is gone and Martin’s hand threads through his hair. Tim has one hand inside and the other one working at himself, and he dirties Martin’s sheets just before Martin gives out one of those beautiful, broken moans and clenches his thighs around Tim’s head.

Still in a post-orgasm daze of his own, Tim thinks that this wouldn’t be a bad way to go. All sound cut off from the legs pressed to his ears, eyes closed, mouth filled with clenching twitching flesh. Eventually Martin lets go and pulls Tim up to him with surprisingly strong arms and kisses the taste of himself out of Tim’s mouth until they end up making out lazily, like teenagers a decade younger and without a care in the world.

(sorry Danny the back of his mind says, for liking something this much, sorry Danny sorry)

Tim leaves after, and surprisingly it’s not because he wants to. It’s just that, well. He has no clothes, after all.

He doesn’t expect it to happen again - that’s not the Tim Stoker Way. Oh, Martin might come and ask again, but Tim will turn him down politely and explain in his now-practiced spiel that long-term entanglements with coworkers just never work out, it’s not them, it’s not him, it’s just how it is. That’s how it will go, that’s how it always goes.

This prediction holds until Tim goes out to - it’s not Hill Top Road, all right? It’s the road  _ next  _ to it, but that doesn’t stop him from getting trapped in a bathroom for what felt like days with nothing but his reflection in the medicine cabinet that kept  _ changing _ for company. 

Sometimes it giggled.

When he comes back Martin presses a cuppa into his hand, gets him wrapped up in a blanket. What could have happened in the past four hours to make him look like that? he asks Tim. 

Four hours? No, no, it was days, Tim insists, but Martin’s watch and the clock on the wall and all the computers say otherwise. 

Tim doesn’t check his own watch, afraid of what he might see.

They don’t talk about it, but Martin takes Tim home again that night, Tim following docilely without even trying to turn towards his own tube station. They get a curry takeaway, hot enough that when Tim’s eyes water he can say it’s from the chillies. He blankly watches some show as Martin bustles around and then they just - go to bed. He wasn’t expecting to be able to sleep but the exhaustion catches up to him all at once and he finds himself wrapping an arm around Martin then passing out.

A crack of thunder in the middle of the night wakes them both. Tim blinks in the dim light to find himself with his head nestled against Martin’s broad chest, tucked just under his chin. They fuck leisurely, carelessly, barely bothering to get out of their clothes other than what’s necessary. 

Tim tucks himself back into his pants, presses a kiss to the nape of Martin’s neck, and goes back to sleep. He doesn’t think about how this isn’t something he does, doesn’t think about how it’s the weekend and they won’t have work to distract them from talking about whatever this is in the morning, doesn’t think about how this is the first person he’s slept with twice since -

(danny)

\- since he decided not to get emotionally involved with anything. 

Tim sleeps.

They keep up their - whatever it is. No enough for a relationship, too much for a series of one night stands. They get close enough that they actually talk a bit about it, about themselves.

(he thinks less and less of his brother, the work becomes easier)

One night Tim is halfway through a joint that Martin refused when he finally asks, tact worn away by the weed, how Martin is so confident in bed and when naked and vulnerable, when he’s so - Tim can’t come up with a word but rather waves his hands in the air - in the rest of his life.

Martin laughs, though not very nicely. He reaches over and takes a hit, coughs in the way that non-smokers do. You get used to it, he says, when you talk to doctors about what they need to do to match up to what’s in your head. It’s not a body any more, it’s - it’s a sculpture, and you’re at a critique. Another hit, less coughing. And then there was my mum, he says.

Tim tries not to roll his eyes. Everything comes back to mother issues in the end, but he tries to listen because it’s Martin.

It was fine when I was growing up, he says. I looked like her, everyone said. And then I changed bit by bit and then it felt like one day when she looked at me it was like she was looking at - he shakes his head. I don’t know. Something terrible. 

Martin shrugs, stretches. It - it doesn’t matter, her mind’s going anyways. He cracks his neck, settles back into the pillows and looks at Tim with eyes that see too deeply. Get over here and let me blow you, he says, and Tim does.

It goes on until it doesn’t.

It goes on until Martin disappears for two weeks, responds to texts with the vaguest of messages about being sick with something.  _ I’m fine, must have caught a bug or something, be back soon. _

At the end the replies are a bit - stranger.  _ I thought it was a bug but it’s so much more _ the phone reads.

_ Come over, Tim. You don’t have to knock. Just come over. _

Tim wonders if he should say something to John, but knows the relationship would come out and he just doesn’t want to deal with all of that. 

He also knows he should absolutely not come over.

Martin finally shows up, goes into the Archivist’s office with John. He doesn’t look at Tim or Sasha, his face is pale, sickly. Tim flips through the books that are his job but his eyes are drawn back to John’s door over and over again. 

The door finally opens and Martin and John stand there talking for a moment. Tim’s phone vibrates with a message, from Martin. The Martin who is talking and has his hands full of files.

_ You should have visited, Tim. We’ll come find you soon enough. _

John explains what happened to everyone and Martin moves into the Archives and Tim knows that whatever they had was over now. Martin is more nervous now, doesn’t like meeting anyone’s eyes. Jumps at sounds - they all do, in the Archives, but he’s far worse than usual.

Tim corners him one day, strokes a hand down Martin’s neck the way he knows he likes, and is surprised when Martin shudders and moves back. 

I - can’t. Not right now he says, and when he meets Tim’s gaze his eyes seem like Tim could fall into them and thrash around in their depths. Maybe later but I’m just - I can’t. 

Tim nods and backs off and doesn’t touch Martin again, but doesn’t understand. Not really.

Until - 

Until he does.

-x-x-x-x-x-

He hasn’t had a good night sleep in... 

Has he ever had a good night’s sleep? Tim can’t quite remember any more. When he closes his eyes there are shapes moving behind them, shapes that wriggle and squirm. The same shapes that he feels in his skin - on his arms and his chest and neck and cheeks and those few that managed to squiggle their way up his pant legs into his calves.

Later Sasha said that they were all dead when she started to pick them out of him. That’s what she said, at least. On the worst nights it unwinds in his head like a statement with video:

Sasha goes to John first, because he’s the one in charge. She picks out the dead worms, one by one, going too slowly, too carefully so that she gets them all. She’s so intent on her work that she doesn’t notice that the worms in Tim are still alive, still burying themselves deeper and deeper, until you can’t tell that they were there at all because there’s so much blood. His breathing is shot, but it’s not just from the carbon dioxide: it’s because there’s a thousand worms working their way down into Tim’s lungs, little silvery bodies lining his bronchi, finally curling up in the alveolar sacs to rest.

And eat.

And breed.

Sasha finally gets to him and pulls them out the best she can, but Sasha is only human, isn’t she? 

(isn’t she)

She can’t see inside, can’t see the damage that has been done.

Then Tim will dream that he’s in John’s office, after the quarantine. When they both looked like they’d been through battle but they’re still here, still here. And John starts the recorder and Tim talks and talks until he’s coughing up worms that scatter onto the recorder, so many of them that they depress the buttons at random. 

Tim dreams that he vomits the river of worms onto John’s desk as the tape recorder plays back a warped version of his own voice, John’s hands reached out helplessly against the unending tide but never getting too close because John  _ knows. _

Out of everyone, John knows.

At that thought Tim will finally jerk himself awake, breathing fast and shallow and likely as not having clawed marks into his skin. It’s hard to tell, the worm wounds are healing so very slowly and it’s all just torn flesh in the end, right?

Right.

It hasn’t escaped Tim that it’s thinking of John at the end that usually lets himself shake out of the dream. Everyone was there - Sasha dewormed them, Martin’s been living with them for weeks, but it’s only John that can understand it.

Tim has never known how he feels about John. He works harder than anyone Tim knows, though that isn’t really a plus. He’s attractive, Tim supposes, in that harried-professor-who-bought-a-blazer-at-a-thrift-shop-in-2004-and-decided-to-never-update-his-style sort of way. His hair is always somehow slightly too long yet never fashionable, and he has a way of looking at you over those thin rim glasses of his that reminds Tim of a few teachers he had back in school. The ones where you were somewhat nervous but also wanted them to take you over their knee. 

And somehow at the same time John is fragile - not in a delicate way, but like those glass droplets, the special ones shaped like tadpoles or spermatozoas. There’s a whole box of them in the Archives and Tim broke one accidentally before he knew what they were. 

Prince Rupert’s Drops, they’re called, and they’re made by dripping molten glass into icy water. There is so much stress on the inside of the glass head that you can hit it with a hammer over and over again and it won’t show as much as a chip, but if you touch the thread-thin tail in the wrong way, just  _ breathe _ on it too hard? It explodes in your hands into so much glittery dust.

The Institute is the hammer, they all know this. 

The question is what will eventually shatter John.

Tim wonders how he sleeps at night, if he has the same nightmares that plague Tim. He’s sure that John has a head full of nightmares belonging to other people. When John records, he always seems to dissolve a bit into the person who gave the statement, until he’s taken the statement into himself and swirled it around like wine before doling it out to the tape recorder at his leisure. That does things to a man, Tim would imagine.

But this - 

The worms. 

That’s more than just words on a page, more than someone else’s secondhand spooky memories. This was - them. 

In bed late at night, when his eyelids are heavy but he’s afraid of letting them close, Tim starts to think of John. Think of John asleep, his glasses folded up on the table next to him, those heavy brows of his finally relaxed. He thinks of John breathing slowly, measuredly, tries to match his own breathing patterns to it - his lungs still aren’t quite there yet, but he’s trying. 

It helps, surprisingly. Just a bit, but it helps.

It’s - weird, Tim knows that, to think of your boss this way, but it’s not about  _ John, _ exactly. It’s thinking about someone who’s been through the same trauma and is coping, however different from reality that might be. It just happens to be Jonathan fucking Sims in the starring role by chance - it could have been anyone, but it happens to be John.

Tim finds himself watching John, seeing if he moves any differently. Would you move differently, with worms in your lungs? Not that they’re there, of course, but - would you? Tim knows he’s lost some of his own grace - the stress on his breathing and where a few worms nibbled at tendons have done their damage.

It’s August in London, and there’s a heatwave on. Aircon isn’t the most common thing, even in the city,, but it’s a necessity at the Institute - everything down in the Archives is temperature controlled, and the rest of the building is a stone fortress that loves to trap heat. So the aircon breaks, of course. 

Tim has been wearing jumpers and long-sleeve shirts buttoned all the way to the collar ever since the worm attacks, but he can’t handle the heat as everything slowly gets soaked with sweat. He changes into a spare shirt but leaves the jumper off and a few buttons open, the sleeves rolled up daringly high.

Everyone has left for cooler pastures, but Tim found a book referencing Grimaldi and goes into a research spiral that only ends when he realizes he’s dripping sweat onto a century-old tome.

(what would Danny think if he knew you were stopping research because of a bit of sweat, the back of Tim’s mind thinks, but at this point it’s been years and the back of Tim’s mind is taken up by writhing silver bodies that are slowly overwriting his own motivations in their cursed calligraphy)

He turns out the lights as he goes, leaving behind him darkness that seems so much deeper in the oppressive heat. The Grimaldi book gets dropped on his desk for later perusal, and he gathers up a set of papers on Robert Smirke that John wanted to drop off on his way out.

Tim pauses in the doorway to John’s office. It’s dark but for an island of light at the desk - John and his papers and one of those cursed tape recorders. In deference to the heat John’s jacket is draped over the back of his chair, his shirt open a button or two more than usual. Tim’s eyes catch on the scars on John’s collarbone, shining and pale against the darker skin surrounding. They seem so much more healed than Tim’s, and somewhere deep inside Tim feels like it’s confirmation of all his fears come true.

He shakes his head, gives a cursory knock on the door that jerks John’s head up and walks in. Here, Tim says, the Smirke papers.

Ah- yes. All right. Thank you, John says, in that way of his where it’s not really thanks but an acknowledgement of - existence, perhaps. 

Tim is tired and Tim is feeling bold and so Tim drops down into the chair next to John’s, the one no one ever uses because it is normally covered in papers and doesn’t have any arms, making it rather uncomfortable. 

John blinks.

How are you dealing, Tim asks, with the - he waves a hand up and down at John before doing the same to his own body, unwilling somehow to say the word ‘worms’.

John tilts his head, as much of a shrug as he’ll do, the prat. It happened. It’s healed. We’ve too much to do than to linger on worrying about it.

Tim squints, leans forward. It’s not his imagination - the marks on John’s face, his arms, what he can see of his chest - they all have the look of old scars. They’re not the raw, bleeding wounds that Tim still has, that makes him go through several boxes of plasters a week so that he doesn’t ruin his shirts. You  _ are _ healed, he murmurs to himself.

Well, of course, John says. Aren’t you? He frowns, adjusts his glasses. Aren’t you, Tim? Before Tim can respond John has yanked the chair closer, pulling Tim into the light and knocking their knees together.

John reaches up, undoes another button or two of Tim’s shirt.

Normally I like a good dinner before getting undressed, Tim lies easily, watching John’s face. John has his Knowing face on, his Researching face, and Tim is just a byproduct getting in the way of the knowledge.

Tim’s shirt is half off his left shoulder now and there’s a small pile of used plasters where John has been pulling them off. I don’t understand, John mutters to himself, these look like mine did - weeks ago? They’re so...fresh.

John has long fingers, nimble like a piano player’s, and one of them presses in to one of the worm holes in a way that makes Tim gasp and bite his lip hard. Another worm hole, another press of John’s finger that makes Tim’s world white out for a moment.

When he blinks his eyes open, he has a hand clenched around the meat of John’s thigh, leaned so close to the other man he can smell the faint spiciness of his aftershave. Tim breathes in deeply, grounding himself.

Tim. Tim? One hand is still pressed to Tim’s wounds, the other is cradling his face and Tim doesn’t know why until John’s thumb wipes away a tear. Tim would puzzle at this unexpected soft side of John except he’s trying to come to terms with how the pain cleared away some of the cobwebs that have been draped over his brain for weeks now.

_ Tim _ \- he gets the feeling John has been saying his name for a few minutes now. 

Yeah.

None of these - wounds - (he can practically hear the gears turning in John’s head to come up with a word other than ‘holes’) are healing properly. They should have all scarred over by now. Mine did. John cocks his head in that birdlike way of his. Also you look like hell - are you sleeping at all?

Tim ignores the second question. What if I’m healing at a normal rate, John. What if it’s you that’s healing too fast?

He can hear John’s breath catch in his throat. No - he says. No, that’s not - he shakes his head. 

Tim licks his lips, closes his eyes. When I sleep I dream. About them burrowing all the way in, taking over my body. So I look like Tim on the outside but Jane on the inside. When I’m awake I feel them all, all the marks they left, and when I’m asleep, when I’m asleep - 

He’s crying now, not loudly, but with large burning tears that slip silently down his narrow cheeks because Tim hasn’t been able to say this to anyone but the worms in his own head in so very, very long. 

When he opens his eyes it’s to warm dark skin, lightly stubbled - John’s neck. Somehow he’s pulled John into his lap, one hand still tight on his narrow thigh and the other around his waist, hand fisted in the shirt at the small of John’s back. John for his part perches easily, long thighs splayed around Tim’s waist and fingers scratching absently through Tim’s hair.

_ This isn’t workplace appropriate _ Tim thinks as he draws in ragged breaths, but before he can think any more John’s hand, pressing into Tim’s shoulder to resettle himself, digs into a worm hole. 

Tim moans, and he can’t tell if it’s in pleasure or pain.

John stills on top of him, hand frozen where it’s pressed to the wound. Tim can feel the slightest trickle of blood make its way down his shoulder blade. How does it feel, John asks, and it’s in his Archivist voice and Tim can’t keep his mouth from opening.

It hurts. It doesn’t hurt like it did when they went in, though. Do you remember that? How it felt as their little mouthparts ground our flesh away to make room for their tunnels? This is a different pain - it’s sharp and it’s sweet and it, it means I can fucking  _ think _ for the first time in I don’t know how long. 

The hand that was in Tim’s hair trails down, presses against a cluster of three holes right under his hairline. It runs through his body like electricity, a short, sharp shock of bright pain that clears a little more of the fuzziness away. 

Tim is hard and obvious in his trousers, there’s no way that John can’t know, can’t feel it. Tim turns his face into John’s warm neck, tries to breathe instead of sob.

Do you want me to keep going? 

All Tim can do is nod, hands clutching uselessly at John’s leg and back, mouth hanging open like he’s been stunned.

Those clever fingers of John’s push Tim’s shirt off of his shoulders proper, and he plays Tim’s torn skin like he’s playing a sonata. There’s as much blood trickling down Tim’s body as sweat now, and he’s breathing harder and harder. 

John’s little finger is in a tunnel on Tim’s pectoral muscle all the way up to the first joint, and Tim realizes that his grip has shifted to John’s hips and he’s grinding up into the other man, body shamelessly working without his say so.

He would stop except - except he can see the bulge in the front of John’s slacks, can feel him willingly moving with Tim’s hands. Tim can’t move anything other than his hands, his arms are trapped at the elbows by his shirt, but John is moving across his body, gouging Tim’s flaws deep until they’re pain in the shape of John’s fingers and not worms any more. 

John I need - I need - oh god - 

Tim can’t articulate it, doesn’t actually know what he needs, just knows that the dreams that the worms left in his skin are almost gone, are almost out of his system. 

John uses a hand to tilt Tim’s head to the side, as delicately as handling centuries old paper. Fingers trace over a few deep marks right at the meeting of Tim’s neck and shoulder before John leans down and  _ bites - _

Tim cries out, loud and echoing in the empty building. His cock throbs in his pants as he comes untouched with thick, blood-hot streaks wetting his left thigh. Had Tim the capacity for shame at his point he might be embarrassed by it - it’s been weeks since he’s been able to get off, so he comes and comes and comes, drowning in the pain and pleasure of it all. It’s a catharsis in the most traditional sense of the word, and John the means of expulsion of lingering terror from his body.

Tears streak Tim’s cheeks but they’re strangely clean-feeling. He and John breathe into each other’s faces, foreheads leaned against one another as they both come down from it in their own ways. 

Tim looks down, hands flexing on John’s narrow hips, and sees that - well, that can’t be comfortable. He moves a hand to John’s thigh, thumb tracing his inseam.

John let me help - let me - please, you know I’m good at this -

No, Tim. I’m, I’m fine, I don’t need any-

John,  _ please. _ Any other day Tim would be mortified at the naked need in his voice, but he knows that he just, he has to  _ finish _ this.

He looks up and whatever John sees in his eyes makes him nod hesitantly. Tim undoes John’s belt and zipper without looking away, a trick he’d normally be proud of but right now it just means he’s closer to finishing - this, whatever this is. 

Tim holds his hand up and John doesn’t pretend to not know why. He licks Tim’s hand, and something in Tim shudders to see the streaks of his own blood mixed in with the saliva. He wraps a hand around John’s cock - thick and hot and somehow heavier than Tim expected - and strokes easily, purposefully.

He knows, Tim just knows that Johnathan fucking Sims isn’t someone who’s had that many expert handjobs in his life. Half of him wants to make it as good as humanly possible for him, the other half just wants it all to be over. 

There’s not really much time to think about it, because it only takes a half-dozen strokes before John is digging his fingernails into Tim’s biceps with a soft grunt, spilling all over Tim’s fist and the remains of Tim’s shirt. 

After they catch their breath, Tim pulls his shirt off, cleans off the two of them before tucking John back in. John slides back into his own chair, and apart from the sweat marks and a faint bloodstain at the corner of his mouth, he looks surprisingly well put together. 

Tim on the other hand, has a wet spot on his pants, no shirt, and is freely bleeding from several dozen places. 

Should you - go to A&E? John says doubtfully as he looks Tim up and down.

Tim shakes his head. I think it needs to - bleed freely for a bit. To get it all out.

He doesn’t say what  _ it _ is, doesn’t even know, really. Just knows that it’s finally leaving him like poison being drained, like pus pockets full of infection being opened up. 

I’ll use the emergency showers, I’ve a spare set of clothes somewhere. John nods hesitantly, drumming his fingers on his desk blotter. Tim wonders if he realizes he’s leaving bloody fingermarks all over.

Tim stands and they part ways with nods that don’t meet each others’ eyes. He knows this isn’t going to happen again, and it’s not because it was a Tim Stoker Special One Night Stand. It wasn’t sex, even though it was. It was - his brain bounces through a thesaurus’ worth of words before settling on  _ ritual, _ even though something about that word leaves a bad taste in his mouth.

Regardless of what you want to call it, Tim goes home, collapses into bed, and sleeps for ten dreamless hours.

In the morning, he wakes up to scabs.

-x-x-x-x-x-

“Statement ends,” Tim says shakily, and his hands skid slightly on the polished surface of the desk.

“Very good,” Elias says, lips brushing Tim’s ear, and Tim can’t help the shiver that goes through his body. He shifts slightly, and there’s moment of cool air against the bare skin of Tim’s back before Elias’s heat returns.

It’s always struck him as strange, that Elias is human enough to be warm. He always feels like he should be cold, like a statue, or an automaton, or - 

Tim cries out as Elias’s fingers move, as they squirm within him like the worms in his memory. He spreads his legs to try and make it better but Elias just presses in another few centimeters.

“Now, now Tim,” he says. “You were doing so well. Don’t make me have to punish you now.”

Tim nods jerkily and swallows hard, can feel where his Adam’s apple presses against Elias’s hand that’s pressed to his throat. In restraint, in warning. He swallows again, recklessly presses forward until his air comes out raspily.

“I told you to just kill me, it would be so much less messy, so much easier. Why won’t you just do it?” He hates how his voice sounds, how it breaks. How it’s clear he’s breaking.

Elias chuckles in Tim’s ear, a low, sensual sound that Tim can’t keep from erupting in goose pimples at. “Oh, I couldn’t do that, Timothy. There are plans for you, beyond even what I have ideas for. Besides,” he says, and works his fingers inside Tim ruthlessly, until Tim is up on his tiptoes and dripping onto the table and ashamed and hateful at what his body is doing, “I haven’t had this much fun in _years.”_

He goes to work then, Elias does, with hands and voice. One hand slowly restricting Tim’s air as he pleases, the other slid deep inside and playing at Tim’s prostate like it’s an instrument. He whispers in Tim’s ear, words that Tim doesn’t even comprehend because he can  _ feel _ Elias, feel him flicking through the files of Tim’s mind like they’re razor-edged sheets of paper. 

Sometimes his fingers feel like Martin’s. Sometimes they feel like worms. Sometimes they feel like his first girlfriend’s, or like those men in the alleyway after the first time he did molly, or even like John’s that one time. He can focus when it’s John.

“Oh,” Elias says, and does something that makes Tim cry out despite his best efforts. “Oh, interesting.” 

Tim can tell where he’s rooting around, but the more he tries to keep those files closed the more they cut at the edges of his brain and soon he can’t focus on that and keeping himself under control and he hasn’t breathed in a while has he and - 

Gasping a huge breath of air in as Elias loosens his grip, Tim’s back snaps into a curve as he comes untouched, splattering fresh streaks of translucent white over the layers of dried regret that are already marking Elias’s desk. 

He sags in Elias’s grip, held up only by his hands on and in him. The hand on his throat is stroking soothingly now, tilting Tim’s head back so it rests against Elias’s shoulder. He can feel Elias hard against the back of his thigh, throbbing in time with Tim’s own heartbeat.

Eventually Elias stops murmuring the words of praise in Tim’s ear, pushes him upright and wraps the restricting hand back around his throat. Is it a threat or a comfort now? Tim doesn’t know.

“All right now, Tim. Time for another go. Tell me about Danny.”

Tim draws in a shuddering breath that tastes of blood and semen, of iron and salt, and something deep inside of him very quietly splinters apart.

“Statement begins.”

**Author's Note:**

> come feel sad with me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/thereweregiants)


End file.
